By now, most of my readers will be aware that there is no more
Libertarian Party, at least in any philosophical, moral, or ethical
sense.

They'll know that, in Portland, Oregon, ironically enough on the
weekend of July 4, 2006, a slathering pack of neolibertariansthe
vicious lowlives who have always placed politics ahead of principleripped
eighty percent of the contents out of the Libertarian Party
national platform. Moreover, they would have obliterated the document
altogether, if they could have mustered a few more gullible foolsthose
incapable of the two millimeter intellectual leap required to
understand that there's no point in having a Libertarian Party, if you
abandon the very libertarianism that the party stands forto help
them.

My first thought, when I heard about this event myself, was that
what the history books might eventually have labeled the Portland
Purgeexcept that its instigators have guaranteed that history will
remember nothing of the Libertarian Partymust have been engineered
by operatives of the Republican National Committee, so well does the
atrocity serve the GOP in general and the present administration in
particular.

After all, on more than one occasion, LP candidates have taken
enough votes in an election to deprive Republicans of victory and
assure the win for Democrats. Whenever that has happened, Republicans
have bawled like the babies wearing dirty, smelly diapers that they
are, which is reason enough for them to set moles burrowing into the
LP to destroy it from within. Now the GOP has nothing more to worry
about.

Possibly more important, with real libertarians (remember that
phrase) around all the time to remind the American electorate of what
they, the GOP, once (dishonestly) claimed to stand for, Republicans
would have a much tougher time propping up their increasingly rickety
Empire of Lies. Voters might be getting tired of perpetual warfare, of
oppression, slavery, torture, and slaughter. Planting parliamentary
saboteurs within the LP, poised to wreck the party at the very moment
it might otherwise have had its greatest successes makes a lot of
sense.

But then I had another thought. My first New York book editor (25
years ago, I'm shocked to realize) was kind of a killjoy, a veritable
Captain Bringdown. For every wonderful, magical-seeming phenomenon in
the universe, heI'll call him "Owen"had a mundane explanation,
a relentlessly unfun way of looking at things that removed all of that
pesky wonder and magic and left you holding something that resembled
mud.

Boring mud, at that.

Obviously, this is not a quality to be encouraged in a science
fiction editor. However Owen was not without his own brand of wisdom,
and the wisest thing he ever said to meI call it "Owen's Law"has
served me in good stead for a quarter of a century. It is simply
this: whenever you are tempted to blame a conspiracy for something
that somebody has done, consider the possibility that they're just
stupid.

It was at that point that something else occurred to me. What had
happened in Portland on the Fourth wasn't merely the complete disaster
it appeared to beit was all of that, of course, make no mistake
about it; the Libertarian Party and the cause of individual liberty
itself will almost certainly never recover, and we'll all end up with
our naked pink asses in transparent bathtubs, being forced to act as
batteries for George Rodham Bush VII's iPod. But it also represents an
amazing, unparalleled opportunity to put Owen's Law to the scientific
test.

Has the Libertarian Party truly been destroyed by Republican
operatives?

Here's how to find out.

Make sure none of their candidates for office ever appears at a
public gathering without some real libertarian (remember that phrase)
hecklers to ask embarrassing questions about what real libertarianism
is.

Make sure none of their candidates ever runs for office without a
real libertarian (remember that phrase) opponent on the ballot with
him. All the neolibertarians will have accomplished, conspiracy or
not, is to split the libertarian vote in half for the remainder of
history.

Many years ago (no, this is not a digression), there was some kind
of dispute over the intellectual property called Ghost Busters. I
know nothing of the details, only that it was serious enough that when
the time came to make a Saturday morning cartoon series based on the
two feature movies of that name, it had to be called The REAL Ghost
Busters.

I can't count the number of occasions since then, whenever I have
been disgusted by what's become of the original Libertarian Party
(the last time, I ran for President in Arizona, instead) that I have
thought about how useful it might be to create The REAL Libertarian
Party (which is why you're supposed to remember that phrase), The
REAL Libertarian Party, on the same basic principle as The Real
Ghostbusters.

Now if the neolibertarians don't object to any of this, then we'll
know for sure that they are political operatives for the criminals in
the White House, and their actual goal all along was to destroy the
LP.

And if they do object, then we'll know that they were just stupid.

Q.E.D.

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of 25 books, including The
American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability Broach,
Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles and speeches,
Lever Action, all of which may be purchased through his website
"The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Ceres, an exciting sequel to Neil's 1993 Ngu family novel
Pallas was recently completed and is presently looking for a
literary home.

A decensored, e-published version of Neil's 1984 novel, TOM
PAINE MARU is available at:
http://payloadz.com/go/sip?id=137991.
Neil is presently working on Ares, the middle volume of the
epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Roswell, Texas, with Rex F. "Baloo"
May.

The stunning 185-page full-color graphic-novelized version of The
Probability Broach, which features the art of Scott Bieser and was
published by BigHead Press
www.bigheadpress.com
has recently won a Special Prometheus Award. It may be had through the publisher, at
www.Amazon.com,
or at BillOfRightsPress.com.